PTAB

IPR2014-00368

LibreStream Technologies Inc v. Thomason John A

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Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Method for Providing Remote Assistance
  • Brief Description: The ’273 patent describes a method for providing real-time remote assistance to field technicians. The system involves a mobile field operator wearing a wireless unit with an audio sensor, video sensor, and transceiver, allowing a remote master technician at a local station to see and hear what the operator experiences and provide guidance.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness of Claim 1 over Beller in view of Ziegra

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Beller (Patent 6,046,712) and Ziegra (Patent 5,619,183).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Beller disclosed all elements of claim 1 except for the preamble’s requirement of assisting a “plurality of mobile field operators.” Beller taught a head-mounted wireless communication system with two-way audio and video between a user performing maintenance and a remote assistant or supervisor. Beller’s head-mounted system corresponded to the claimed “wireless remote system” (including audio/video sensors, processor, and transceiver), and its remote assistant’s terminal corresponded to the “local station.” Petitioner contended that Ziegra, which described a similar remote assistance system, explicitly taught that a “plurality” of remote systems was a “preferred” implementation.
    • Motivation to Combine: A person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would combine the teachings of Beller and Ziegra to scale Beller’s single-user system to support multiple field operators simultaneously. Petitioner asserted this modification was merely the duplication of known components to achieve a predictable result—allowing more users to communicate with master technicians—and did not produce any unexpected results, a concept well-established in case law. This was further supported by the prosecution history, where the Patent Owner acquiesced to a double-patenting rejection based on the obviousness of duplicating remote systems.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have a reasonable expectation of success in modifying Beller’s system to support multiple operators, as it involved the predictable scaling of a known communication architecture as suggested by Ziegra.

Ground 2: Obviousness of Claim 2 over Beller, Ziegra, McPheely, Thorpe, and David

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Beller (Patent 6,046,712), Ziegra (Patent 5,619,183), McPheely (Patent 5,844,601), Thorpe (a 1995 publication on multimedia communications in construction), and David (Patent 5,544,649).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that claim 2 was nearly identical to claim 1, with the primary difference being the requirement of a “plurality of local master technicians” providing assistance. The combination of Beller and Ziegra was relied upon for the same reasons as in Ground 1. The additional references—McPheely, Thorpe, and David—were introduced to demonstrate that employing multiple experts or supervisors at a central location to assist remote workers was a well-known and obvious practice across various industries at the time of the invention. McPheely taught a service center monitoring multiple remote plant locations. Thorpe described a remote “design team” with multiple workstations assisting a site engineer. David disclosed a “staff or team” of healthcare workers remotely monitoring multiple patients.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would be motivated to modify the Beller/Ziegra system to include multiple master technicians for reasons of efficiency, scalability, and convenience. The additional references demonstrated the known advantages of using a team of experts for remote support, such as monitoring more operators and providing a broader range of expertise. Petitioner argued it would have been an obvious design choice to implement Beller’s remote assistance terminal with multiple stations for multiple supervisors, allowing simultaneous support for multiple field users.
    • Expectation of Success: Combining the concept of a multi-expert support team (from McPheely, Thorpe, and David) with the wireless remote assistance framework of Beller and Ziegra would have been straightforward and predictable for a POSITA. The result would be an expected and advantageous enhancement allowing for more comprehensive and scalable remote support.

4. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1 and 2 of the ’273 patent as unpatentable.